


you're skin, oh yeah you're skin and bones

by beigetea



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anorexia, Bulimia, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Lovers, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Idk where im going with this, Pre-Canon, Rape, cardans really sad, mainly bulimia, the answer is no, will i ever write anything other than angst?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:00:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22932163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beigetea/pseuds/beigetea
Summary: cardan is sick. jude is the only one who seems to notice.i wrote part of this a while back and i am repulsed by the first few chapters but instead of doing a rewrite i decided to continue. i refuse to be one of those fanfic authors who leave their fics at last updated in 2005. enjoy <3
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 25
Kudos: 103





	1. in the absense of cardan

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY THE NOTES FOR THIS ARE LONG READY? ok first of all this is pre-series, put it wherever you want i only have chapter one written as of right now so i havent completely decided but i'm saying their around 15-16? still definitely kids. apparently cardan was canonically 18 in tcp, which i dont completely believe, so just do what u want free reign for now. i haven't read tcp in over a year, so some aspects might be canon-divergent and i apologize. please review and give notes on where you want it to go, it's highly appreciated by young writers like me :)

Jude had always seemed to admire- and loathe- Cardan Greenbriar from a distance. She never had any desire to become intertwined in his life. If anything, she desired to be as far away from him as possible. 

But, as fate would have it, that plan went to shit.

She was being chased by Valerian and Nicasia, taunted with faerie fruit and harsh words. She was cornered into the single bathroom on the schoolground, available for the human students but never used because of the fear of relentless tormenting, and quickly opened the door and shut it behind her, bolting it shut. She closed her eyes and listened. Valerian and Nicasia seemed to lose interest and walk away, and she leaned against the door in relief.

Until she heard coughing coming from the corner of the room.

Public bathrooms were few and far between in Faerie. Nobody cared enough about Jude’s kind enough to put forth effort to make their lives easier. They used them as slaves and entertainment, Jude’s only protection was her relation to Madoc. This bathroom was clearly carelessly thrown together in fear of Madoc. It mocked mortal stalls, but only to an extent. There weren’t toilets, as that would require plumbing, so there were just large chamber pots that were frequently emptied in what resembled stalls. There were only three, which was fine, and the noise seemed to be coming from the one on the left.

She peered around the buckets of water to find the stall open, and none other than her favorite Greenbriar clutching it, two fingers down his own throat.

Jude froze. No faerie had a reason to do this unless they were poisoned. No  _ human  _ had a reason to do this unless they were poisoned. Cardan was not under the influence of wraithberry, if he was he would’ve acted intoxicated and wouldn’t have had the sense to induce vomiting. 

The only reason left would be that Cardan was  _ bulimic _ . She’d read mortal books, she knew what it was, but what she didn’t know was  _ why. _ If she was told that one of these faeries were bulimic, Cardan would be the first to cross off the suspect list. He was an attractive male, a royal one at that. He had absolutely everything Jude wanted and more. 

There had to be another reason. Jude slipped out of the bathroom and back into the schoolground, where Valerian and Nicasia had reseated themselves along with Locke, waiting for Cardan. She passed them, trying to hear what they were talking about, but it was about some faerie revel. It seemed even they had no idea of Cardan’s whereabouts, and what he was doing. They’d been with him moments ago, eating lunch.

Jude took a seat next to Taryn. The lesson started in the absence of Cardan.

She’d been taking notes a few minutes when Cardan came in, his usual smirk on his face. She studied him, looking for evidence of his escapade, and found a pinkish flush to his face and paler skin. Besides those hints, which went seemingly unnoticed by his friends, there was nothing. Nothing to prove that his hands, (which, at a later glance, proved to hold red and scraped knuckles), had fingers down his own throat just minutes ago.

  
Which only made her wonder,  _ how many times had he done this? _


	2. for stability

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cardan's getting sicker

The next day, Jude found herself staring at Cardan. She sat through the lessons with her eyes on him, surveying every part of his body. She found little things she’d never noticed before, the subtle bruises under his eyes, the scar that started from the back of his neck and trailed down into his shirt. 

At lunch she watched him peel his tangerine, smiling and laughing with his friends. She noted how he glanced back at the fruit nervously before looking back up and continuing to eat it with laughter. 

“Why are you watching him like that?” Taryn plopped down beside her, sandwich in hand. Jude contemplated telling her, but she didn’t know what good it would do. Taryn wasn’t known for keeping secrets, and the last thing she wanted was for this to get out, though she wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe she enjoyed having leverage on Cardan. Maybe she felt good having a secret that even his friends didn’t know. She couldn’t place it, but she made up her mind.

“I don’t know. He just looks,” She sighed, “different.” 

“Why do you care? He’s horrible, Jude.”

“I don’t care! I’m just curious.”

Nicasia looked back and caught her staring. She looked away quickly.

“So,” Jude bit into her sandwich. “How’s Oak? I haven’t seen him in days. Is he okay?”

“He’s been sick. I think he has something, but it’s not bad. He’ll be- Is that my dress?”

She widened her eyes and shook her head. “Jude. It’s mine.” 

“Not anymore!” She got up and ran, erupting in laughter, as Taryn chased her around the courtyard. They reached their seats once again, smiling, Jude trying to get her hair together again, when he realized Cardan was gone again. 

Although she knew where he was and what he was doing, she found herself slinking back into the bathroom. As anticipated, he was there, though he wasn’t retching anymore. He seemed to be done from the redness in his cheeks and eyes and lips and the exhaustion on his face. He was leaning against the wall, out of breath. He bent his head, and as his curls fell over his face he began to stand up.

That was when he fell.

He was gripping the wall for stability when his eyes suddenly rolled back in his head and he collapsed onto the floor, laying there. She waited a few seconds, but when he didn’t seem to get up, she raced to his side. Jude shook Cardan slightly until his eyes began to flutter open.

“Jude,” he wearied, a half-question half-statement. 

“Yeah.” She backed up, suddenly feeling the  realness  of the situation. Cardan Greenbriar was on the floor in front of her, half unconscious, after making himself vomit. He just watched her uneasily as he got up and brushed himself off.

“Get away from me.” 

“Why are you doing this?”   
  


His gaze left her eyes. “I said  _ leave,  _ Jude.”

And she did. And he didn’t come back for the entirety of the lesson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thoughts?


	3. fading

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> short filler chapter, but an important one

For the next few weeks Jude watched Cardan from a distance. She saw him get paler and sicker. The bruises under his eyes darkened, and he was visibly growing thinner. He still talked to his friends, but his laughter began to cease. He almost always had his head down or in his hands during class. He even once fell asleep, but no one dared to wake him up, and Nicasia stayed with him while everyone left, with a worried expression. He was getting worse. And she could see it too.

Cardan was fading. There was no better way to say it.

She watched as the life drained out of Cardan. The color left his face, the laughter left his mouth. She didn’t enjoy this, as much as she wanted to. Despite her heritage, she just couldn’t take pleasure in watching him die a slow and painful death.

But she didn’t know how to intervene. Cardan hated her. She hated him. Nothing she’d say would matter. She would just embarrass herself more than she already has.

One day she was walking to class alongside the familiar swarm of Cardan’s friends. 

“I’m worried about him,” uttered a distressed Nicasia. “He says he’s fine but you can see that he’s not okay, can’t you? When was the last time we brought him skinny dipping? Have you seen his body?”

Locke shook his head. “He’s fine, Nicasia. He’s probably just going through a tough spot with Balekin again. Maybe he-”

“It’s been too long. It’s impossible. He should be better by now.”

“It’s been three weeks,” Valerian admitted.

It had been six weeks since Jude had seen him faint in the bathroom. But Cardan was a master of hiding his pain. That wasn’t news to her.

Locke stopped in his tracks. “Well what are we going to do? Cardan’s not going to let us help him. He’s not going to eat. Balekin would only applaud him for this behavior if we went to him.”

“We can’t just let him die,” Nicasia pleaded. “There has to be something we can do.”

Locke turned to look at me, who’d stopped alongside them. “Well?”

I scuttered along hopelessly.


	4. father wont be pleased

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so so sorry for not updating this in months i just thought the beginning was so shitty. orphaning this came across my mind but i got a lot of support n i didnt wanna let u guys down. this one is short but the next chapter is almost completed, thank u for ur support and comments are always incredibly appreciated <3

“Father won’t be pleased when he sees this, you know.”

Cardan closed his eyes at Balekin’s words. They were trying on the doublet he was to wear at the next revel, and to no avail could they stop the fabric from hanging off his thin frame. 

“What does he expect me to do?” 

Balekin sighed from behind him, unpinning the back of the attire. “ _Eat._ ”

Cardan stared at the ground. “He could not care less if I ate.”

Balekin moved to the front of Cardan, and began unbuttoning the doublet. “You’re right. And neither could I. But it’s starting to show,” he jabbed at his ribcage, provoking a gasp from Cardan, “and people will ask questions. Finding out their prince is starving himself isn’t going to give the royal family a great image, is it?”

Cardan snorted. “If only they knew how different we were from our _image._ ”

“We’d be happy if it weren’t for you, brother. You know you’ve brought this suffering upon yourself. Dealing with it will strengthen you, since you are struggling in that department.”

Carden met his brother’s eye. “Swordplay?”

Balekin shook his head. “Not today. I don’t care to see you collapsing again anytime soon.” With that, he left, doublet in hand, leaving cardan blushing. He never meant to faint in front of Balekin, but the swordplay had been intense, and he’d gotten dizzy. Balekin hadn’t spared his energy waking him, he’d left Cardan to wake up a few minutes later, very disoriented. 

If he knew Jude had seen him like that, he would be in for an intense whipping.

It embarrassed him, that of all people, a _mortal_ would be the one to walk in on him. He prayed she hadn’t told anyone. Her question had prompted him to believe she knew what he had done, and had been watching him before. He didn’t enjoy the ceremony, it was humiliating and so very human, but after eating he was just so filled with self-loathing and anxiety he couldn’t stand to keep his food down. It terrified Cardan, how out of control he was. How quickly it had escalated from a coping mechanism to complete repulsion. They very image of his body made him sick. 

He was scared. 

But the insecurity outweighed the fear, and no matter how often he told himself he would get better, no matter how many times he faced his own putrid vomit and promised never again, no matter how many times he cried himself to sleep and begged for an end to it all, he always came back to this wretched cycle. Always.

And nobody ever told him to stop.


	5. crimson droplets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok lets pretend i didnt disappear and continue with these notes. number 1, i changed the name of this fic! i wasnt straight vibing with the last one and if im being honest the first like three chapters physically repulse me so i needed some form of change to give me motivation to keep writing this. number 2, there will now be some sh in this fic. i included and will continue to include tws for when the sh is extremely graphic and detailed, and when it is occuring in the moment, but there will still be discussion of and just general sh mentions in this fic in case that triggers anyone. major tw for eds all the way through, as usual. number 3, just to make this fic easier for me and because im lazy there is now plumbing in faerie. ok bye have fun!

Often, Cardan finds himself in tears on the bathroom floor. It was a common occurrence, becoming even more increasingly common.

He’d been worse lately. He could lie to himself and say he hasn’t, but he’d done that far too many times, enough times to know that denial is draining. He found that he simply did not care enough to deny it. Even when he thought about it, how he would die and slowly fade out of existence. He simply couldn’t bring himself to care.

It was during one of these bathroom floor episodes, that something entirely uncommon.

He was breathing hard, having just forced his fingers down his throat to vomit what he’d eaten at a revel. The revel was still going on outside, as revels do. It’s uncommon that they stop for anyone, or anything. Deaths were common at these events. A missing prince was insignificant. His cheeks were flushed and hot, and he leaned down with his forehead against the seat of the toilet. His eyelashes were wet. He was hungry, god, he was so hungry. He couldn’t remember the last he’d eaten. The days had seemed to blend together lately, all into one, one spinning day that lasted a year, or an hour, he really did have no concept of time. He was weak and disoriented and he found himself brushing off significant royal matters and sending them off to his siblings. He looked up from the toilet, across the room to a big carved mirror set against the door. 

His heart sank.

Despite being flushed from purging, he was pale. So pale, paper white across his body. His features were normally pointed, but they were now . His eyes were tearful, and his body-

He was skin and bones. Nothing else, he was made of nothing else, just bones and skin and angles and sad, sunken eyes. His brother hadn’t talked to him in ages. He noticed people around him had started worryingly staring at him. But he couldn’t do anything, he couldn’t fix him, he was just too _weak_ , too sick, too terrible. And although he saw how horrible he looked, he felt repulsed. Sick. He wanted to starve harder, because even though he was so thin, a level of thin he knew wasn’t common, he wasn’t thin _enough._

Skin and bones, but not enough.

(tw for sh, detailed sh content starts here, skip this paragraph if you’re uncomfortable <3) He felt too hot all of a sudden, unfamiliar because all he had felt recently was freezing cold, too hot and too sick and too repulsed. He needed to feel something, he needed to hurt. He pulled a knife out of his coat, (he found himself in layers all the time, shielding himself against the bitter cold he never stopped feeling, although the effort was futile,) and held it against his forearm. He drew the blade against his white skin, crimson droplets standing out violently against his pale skin, racing down his arm like raindrops racing on windows. He drew the blade a few more times, and put it away, wiping it and his arm with a towel. He found he liked the pain, the sharpness standing out in his fogged up world. 

He stared down at his scars. 

He couldn’t find it in himself to react much.


End file.
